


Bottles In The Ice

by Bam4Me



Series: Future Rounds [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU character past, Alcohol Mentions, Both Ageplay and Pet Play mentioned, Bucky and Natashas Background, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Steve Gets Hangry, character introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 13:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12889233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bam4Me/pseuds/Bam4Me
Summary: Steve and Bucky come back to the penthouse to find they had a visitor earlier.





	Bottles In The Ice

**Author's Note:**

> avengersnonsexualageplay.tumblr.com

Bucky and Steve got off the elevator on the penthouse, freshly showered after their session in the gym that morning, and started heading towards the kitchen to get started on breakfast.

 

It was way too early for Tony to be awake, -because he’d actually slept the night before, surprise of all surprises- but Bucky couldn’t resist opening up the door to the main suite before passing it, and checking to see that his boyfriend was still passed out on the bed there. He’d migrated somewhat since Steve had last left him, but he was curled up on what looked like a nest of all their pillows and tucked up under the softest, heaviest blanket they owned.

 

It looked utterly comfortable, and Tony was always a welcome sight to see, but Bucky knew if he went in there now he’d get restless in five minutes and wake the man up. Which they both would regret.

 

He sighed and headed back towards the kitchen, finding Steve coming back from his own room after changing into an oversized sweater. It was cold out today, there was a light sprinkling of snow coming down on the balcony, and the two super soldiers were too wary to go outside to run in it, hence their session in the gym that morning.

 

“What’s for breakfast?”

 

“Everything.” Bucky’s voice was nothing more than a mutter as he started digging through the cabinets for bread and pans as Steve attacked the fridge, taking out everything that looked good. Which, while he was hungry after a workout, meant basically the whole fridge. Bucky sighed and reached over to flip on the oven, deciding that the stove was going to get too crowded if he tried to cook it all.

 

He paused while he was covering a pan in bacon strips when Steve picked something off the kitchen table. When you’re outside the room, the kitchen table is fairly well covered, and Bucky is used to living with enough people by now that he isn’t as fast to get suspicious about new things in the room as he once would have, but it was there.

 

It was a bottle of vodka. A  _ big _ bottle of vodka. Russian vodka.

 

Steve was frowning at it, like it was a personal offense to him. Bucky raised an eyebrow in question.

 

“I hope Thor didn’t leave this here, that would be completely inconsiderate of him.”

 

Bucky turned back to where he was finishing up with the bacon and shook his head a little. “Natasha left that. I’ll ask her not to leave alcohol in the penthouse anymore. Makes Tony twitchy.”

 

There was one thing that they were working on, drinking. For Thor, sometimes he tended to forget that human alcohol, though it didn’t effect him, was enough to tempt a 40 year old alcoholic who was trying to stay sober. They’ve all but banned it on this floor by now.

 

Looking back at where Steve was giving him a funny look, Bucky couldn’t help but feel his guts twisting up inside him, and for the first time in a while, he felt rather sick. Not enough to be sick, but enough that his shoulders hunched in as he shoved the pan in the oven and shuffled off to the sink to wash the grease off his hands.

 

He felt conflicted. About his own life even. It didn’t pass Steve’s sight at all. For a half a minute Bucky thought the man might drop it.

 

He wouldn’t be Steve if he just  _ dropped _ the subject.

 

“Why is Natasha leaving bottles of vodka on the kitchen table?”

 

Bucky shrugged. “Because I forgot to ask her not to?”

 

Steve sighed, and Bucky bristled a little bit at the tone of it. That was Steve’s ‘no Thor, chewing on the couch is a no no’ sigh. How rude. “Why is Natasha giving you vodka at all?”

 

“It’s tradition.”

 

“Russian tradition?”

 

Bucky sighed, moving more pans into the oven before grabbing a cutting board and pointedly shoving it on the other side of the island for Steve to start cutting stuff. If he was this hungry after a workout the least he could do was help. Steve pointedly set the bottle back down on the table, this time prominently in sight. 

 

“If it was Russian tradition it’d be daily, not yearly.”

 

Steve couldn’t hold back the little snort, slicing into a bell pepper with a vicious nature that only comes to him when he’s hitting ‘hangry’ territories, so Bucky turned back to the stove, starting in on a skillet of fried eggs so he could make his friend eat and maybe shut up finally. There was just something about talking about Bucky’s past that made him twitchy. Bucky is a ‘live in the moment’ kind of guy.

 

Mainly because his past still had years and years of gaps in it, especially going back on thirty or so years ago when he’d still been under Hydra influence. The fact that him and Natasha even had a tradition at all was more do to the need to make sure the other was alive once a year than any sort of real sentimentality. The fact that she wanted to continue it now spoke more to the fact that they’ve been working together… probably.

 

In a minute he had a nice looking pile of eggs and cheese on a plate and turned back around to take the -very much chopped- veggies away from Steve’s knife hungry hands, and shoved the plate of eggs at him with a grunt.

 

“Eat. You’re evil when you’re hungry.”

 

Steve didn’t actually argue that, mouth so full of food that Bucky was surprised he wasn’t choking. Bucky didn’t understand ‘hangry’ but Steve was downright terrible when he hit that point.

 

“So why vodka? I thought you and Natasha never worked together before?”

 

Bucky shook his head, turning back to dump the veggies in a pan so he could look anywhere but at Steve, who was probably cheating on Thor with those eggs right now, and as Steve’s brother, he doesn’t wanna see that. That’s just weird.

 

“Not since the Red Room, no.”

 

Steve was quiet for another minute while Bucky concentrated on the stove, doing whatever he could to avoid-

 

“I know Hydra was using you as the Winter Soldier before you and Natasha left, so when did you have the chance to train her in the Red Room?”

 

No wonder Steve was so interested in puppies. He was like a damn dog with a bone. He turned around and gave Steve a cautious look. Steve was there with an empty plate and sitting on his hands in a way that made Bucky know he was still in hangry territory. “How much do you know?”

 

Steve shrugged. “They had you in cryo for months or years at a time between missions. Natasha said she grew up in the Red Room back when you were still training new recruits there.”

 

Bucky nodded once, turning back to the pan of ground beef. Steve turned into a grouchy mess when he didn’t eat at least half a fridge for one meal a day, and Bucky always ended up cooking for him. He can’t say he hates it that much. “That’s pretty much all there was, I guess.”

 

Steve sat up, looking confused. “No, you said you were training new recruits at the end of WWII. You said you didn’t enter the Winter Soldier program until some time in the sixties.”

 

Bucky shrugged. “More or less, I guess. I don’t really remember exact dates, Stevie. My memory has too many holes in it now days. Tony said he can help me out with that B.A.R.F. thing but I’m not sure I’m ready to relive those memories yet.”

 

Correction; he  _ wasn’t _ ready to relive those memories. He didn’t think he ever would be. The only reason Tony had gotten him to listen this far, was because he said Bucky could remember his sisters faces. Back when they were still little and he had to help his mother with them.

 

He was still considering it. He might say no anyways.

 

“Bucky?”

 

“Yeah, Stevie?”

 

“Meat’s burning.”

 

Bucky sighed, moving the meat off the stove and piling it onto a plate and putting the mound of veggies in it’s place.

 

“Bucky, Tony said the memory machine,” Bucky had to snort there, no matter what happened, Steve was always too classy to call it BARF, “can help you with short term memory too.”

 

“My memory isn’t that bad.”

 

“You called us at the store the other day saying you didn’t remember leaving the tower.”

 

Bucky’s grip on the pan handle got dangerously tight, so he let go, moving to start taking pans out of the oven now that they were done. He… he didn’t remember that.

 

He let out a little curse when he almost forgot an oven mit, but he’s for  _ sure _ blaming that one on Steve, who won’t stop poking at him today. Really, it’s not that nice.

 

He will admit, his memory could be better, but no matter how different from Hydra Tony is, he’s just not sure he’s ready for another scientist poking around inside his brain yet. It’s been years, but that was still like some sort of open wound in his mind, and he felt like poking it will just make it bleed.

 

When he turned back around, Steve was looking back at the table again, and Bucky sighed. “You know Natasha is the same age as us, right?”

 

Steve blinked, once, twice, and turned back with a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

 

Bucky nodded. “Alright, she’s a few years younger, but since she never got frozen, it’s safe to say she’s the second oldest member of the team.”

 

“Natasha is… how?”

 

“Me.”

 

“What?”

 

“They used the serum inside of me, Steve. They  _ tried _ to use the serum in me to make more Winter Soldiers, but like both you and me, their testing only yielded one viable result. Natasha. She doesn’t have as much as I do, and I don’t have as much as you do, but we all have the same serum in us. I trained her in the Red Room before going into cryo for my Winter Soldier missions.”

 

“Why doesn’t SHIELD know this?”

 

“Because neither of us wanted them to. They know Natasha has the serum, but because of that they can’t even figure out her age biologically, so they just assumed she’s younger than she is. Steve, they’ve never brainwashed her. She grew up in the Red Room, so they had no need to. Her memory is spotless. If you want real answers, I’m not who you should be asking.”

 

Steve watched him suspiciously as he shoved a bite of toast in his mouth. “How long ago did you two get out?”

 

“Thirty years.”

 

Steve felt winded for a moment. To be completely honest, he hadn’t thought it’d be a day over ten. “What have you been doing all this time?”

 

Bucky shrugged. “Finding people to help me take out Hydra bases. This is the longest time I’ve spent with one single team before.”

 

Steve was suddenly giving Bucky a desperate wide eyed look, and Bucky knew that was the wrong thing to say. “You’ll stay with us, right?”

 

Bucky nodded, feeling that stupid fragile feeling in his chest that always came up around the Avengers. When Tony was little and vulnerable. When he found Thor in puppyspace, completely trusting and loving Steve. When he saw Natasha, and how  _ good _ she is now days. Even when he saw Clint doing something stupid, as he was likely to do just to give them all a heart attack.

 

“I won’t leave. I’m here for good. I like it here.”

 

Steve deflated a little, looking relieved. But, he still looked behind him at the table again. “Why is vodka a tradition?”

 

Bucky smiled a little, before it sort of morphed into a confused twist, trying to pull up the memories. His memory was pretty terrible in the beginning. “I… when Natalia first got out, I took her with me cause I was scared they might make more soldiers and send them after me to bring me back. Didn’t want that, so I took her with. It was more than a year before we trusted each other enough not to be on edge constantly. But then suddenly we did.

 

“There was no specific reason, I just got so tired of the paranoia. I did know that she wasn’t interested in going back either though, so I figured that death would be better than going back. If she was going to kill me, I didn’t care. I sorta snapped one night and came home with a bag full of vodka. Since we were still in Russia at the time, it was fairly cheap.”

 

“And you two got drunk together?”

 

Bucky shook his head. “No. That’s when the two of us learned that we can’t get drunk. At all. It was a shitty night. But we trusted each other after that. Every year we met up on the same day and downed probably two or three bottles each, usually terrifying anyone who saw us. Just making sure the other was alive still. I didn’t realize we’d be doing it again this year.”

 

Steve had to get up to finish putting the rest of the food out on plates while Bucky took a seat at the counter, just breathing. He wasn’t thinking about being with Hydra - well, he was trying not to. Sometimes, when he had to talk about something, he was so thankful for the shitty memory keeping him from actually getting sucked in, but that didn’t mean thinking about it made him feel good.

 

There was food on the counter and a pot of coffee made when Tony finally stirred from bed, wandering into the kitchen as he followed his nose to it, and Bucky couldn’t help but smile as Tony pressed against his side in a bid to reach for the coffee, putting a hand on either side of his waist and pulling him into him. He kissed Tony’s cheek while the man hummed into his coffee, just letting Bucky hold him while coming back out of his head.

 

Steve moved in the background, quietly taking the bottle out of the room to hide in his own bedroom until Tony was gone again, not wanting to freak both of them out today.

 

Bucky doesn’t see why Steve is so worried about it. He’s been out of Hydra for a while now, but this is the first place he’s felt happy, and Steve shouldn’t be so worried he was gonna run off now.

 

If he did, he’d probably take them with him.

**Author's Note:**

> avengersnonsexualageplay.tumblr.com
> 
> Some thoughts: This was SUPPOSED to be a fic where Steve mentioned that Thor wanted more traditional areas of Dom/sub scenes (as in, more service submission and stuff like that) and how Steve was really excited but also nervous because he realized he hasn't gone outside of pet play (and occasionally ageplay when he babysits Tony or Clint) in soooooo long and Bucky contemplates if he wants to have that for him and Tony too (he does you know he does so there will probably be a fic with that soon) but then the bottle showed up and Bucky was like 'fuck you I don't want to talk about that' so I had to force him to and that took forever and then by the end of it I couldn't work that in there cause Tony came in so whatever. Either way, imagine that it happens at some point.


End file.
